President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Monday dismissed the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, saying that collusion is “not a crime.”

“I have been sitting here looking in the federal code trying to find collusion as a crime,” Giuliani said on “Fox & Friends.”

“Collusion is not a crime.”

The president’s attorney maintained that his client is “absolutely innocent” and said that the recently released tapes of conversations between Trump and his former lawyer Michael Cohen prove that the president “didn’t do anything wrong.”

Giuliani is not alone in attempting to minimize the criminality of collusion, in fact, he has a lot of conservative helpers.

How do you know when the seriousness of the Russia scandal has intensified? When Donald Trump’s allies discover it’s time to move the goal posts again.

Take, for example, National Review’s Andrew McCarthy arguing on Fox News last week that there’s nothing necessarily wrong with the president’s political operation possibly having turned to a foreign adversary to help win an American election.

“Look, I don’t think that it’s bad if campaigns are turning to foreign governments for dirt. It’s not collusion, it’s not something that’s impeachable, it’s icky. But that’s what this is.”

A day later, The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway wrote, “I don’t have a problem [with] getting dirt on election opponents from foreigners.” She added that relying on the Steele dossier is effectively the same thing.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson quickly endorsed the line, telling his viewers, “Nobody is claiming that any information changed hands, though, even if it did, so what?”

This may have been inevitable, but that doesn’t make the new talking point any less pitiful.

So is collusion a federal crime?

No, not exactly.

But what the word stands for, most certainly is.

Here let former White House counsel John Dean explain it to you better than I could.

It was the fake legal analysis by Fox News in June—claiming that “collusion” with a foreign government violated no law—that prompted me to look. Surely Fox knows it fooled only fools. Collusion is the descriptive word the news media has settled on to cover many potential illegal actions by the Trump campaign, which could range from aiding and abetting (18 USC 2) to conspiracy per se (18 USC 371) to conspiring to violate several potentially applicable laws like: 18 USC 1030—fraud and related activity in connection with computers; 18 USC 1343—wire fraud; or 52 USC 30121—contributions and donations by foreign nationals. Also, 18 USC 2381—for, contrary to a widespread belief that there must be a declared war, the Justice Department as recently as 2006 indicted for “aid and comfort” to our enemies, the form of collusion better known as treason. Collusion is the perfect word to cover such crimes, pejorative and inclusive.

So yes, collusion itself is not the crime, but what it encompasses could most definitely send some asses to prison.

And what’s more, Giuliani knows it.

More importantly, attempting to dismiss the seriousness of the collusion charge most likely means that Giuliani realizes that it is about to be proven.

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“When contacted by GSN, Alaska Airlines said the businessman and his partner were “mistakenly assigned the same seats as another couple in Premium Class.”

“We reseated one of the guests from Premium Class in the Main Cabin,” the airline’s statement read.

In his posts on Twitter and Facebook, Cooley — owner of the popular West Hollywood club The Abbey — implored his followers to boycott Alaska Airlines and Virgin Airlines, the company it just purchased. “

anon
July 30, 2018 at 1:38 pm

Poor little rudy goolie. His crooked finger and hair lip are caught. The capped teeth fake smile aint working out. Trump is history, rudy is history the trump foundation of morons is history. Count down. Las Vegas betting will open soon on this bunch of losers going down daily.

Anonymous
July 30, 2018 at 2:23 pm

I wonder if he’s saying this now because he knows Mueller likely has enough evidence to charge Trump and his ilk for colluding. Thus, we move from “No collusion” to “collusion is not a crime!!!”

Ridiculous.

Anonymous
July 30, 2018 at 3:55 pm

Does he sound like a mob boss or what?

wind
July 30, 2018 at 9:35 pm

And he looks like what came out of my ass this morning – a smelly clump of shit.

I haven’t been able to abide this @ss for years, 9/11 being the crowning blow.
“America’s mayor?” He knew what was going on, just like Cheney and Dubya. So many lives lost, and those first responders in the aftermath cleaning it up.

O/T, meanwhile in the “America’s Team” department:https://tinyurl.com/y8b276uj
I’m just so sick of all of it and what this country has become in 18 months.

Anonymous
July 30, 2018 at 6:28 pm

I don’t recall rudy did anything to expose the lie that the air was ok after 911.

It was Hillary that exposed that everyone was being exposed to all the poisons.

Anonymous
July 30, 2018 at 7:12 pm

Exactly my point, and even then the mango blowtard said that he saw it all happen from his office in real life not TV. Uh huh. Know Manhattan? Jon Lovitz would be proud.

“What we’re seeing right now amidst some of this “collusion is not a crime” hysteria is the people closest to this, people like Rudy Giuliani and the president himself, they’re not acting like Mueller is wrapping this up. They’re acting like something is about to get much hotter and like it is somehow for some reason important to them to get at least their supporters, at least some people in this nation right now tonight, to believe that crimes are not crimes.”

” “So if there’s no such thing as collusion, then what are we really talking about? It seems the closest thing to what Giuliani means when he talks about ‘collusion’ is the actual federal crime of conspiracy. One federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371, makes it a crime to conspire to commit any other federal crime, and many other statutes carry their own sub-parts that criminalize conspiracy, or attempt, as well as the actual completed crime itself.”” As judges instruct criminal juries, a conspiracy is simply any agreement to break the law. That’s it. A conspiracy doesn’t need to be dramatic, or sinister, or clever, or even secretive. It doesn’t even need to be successful.””

Anonymous
July 30, 2018 at 8:00 pm

If I was the least bit computer savvy, I’d tweet him in a red gown photoshopped singing Helen Reddy. “Poor Ol’ Rudy Red Dress.” He likes his drag queens!

Anon
July 30, 2018 at 8:08 pm

You can’t get contributions from foreigners, including inkind contributions, and the Trump campaign essentially got hundreds of thousands of dollars of free opposition research. And that’s not including the help they got with micro-targeting or the fact that the Russians stole the playbook for the Clinton campaign. So yeah — crime.

anonymous
July 31, 2018 at 8:19 am

RICO>”The reporters and photographers and TV news crews had been summoned for a Giuliani press conference that was accompanied by the first Wall Street perp walk.”
“Giuliani’s obvious intent was to give the three executives such a scare that they would immediately admit their guilt. They might have if they had in fact been guilty. They retained the resilience of the innocent.”
“The court cited an earlier case where it had noted, “in America we still respect the dignity of the individual, and [a defendant]… is not to be imprisoned except on definite proof of a specific crime.”
“After 9/11, Giuliani became known as “America’s mayor.” He wanted to become America’s Statesman when Donald Trump was elected, but that was not to be. Giuliani has now become the president’s new fixer.”